Microsoft Conversational AI Platform for Developers: End-to-End Chatbot Development from Planning to Deployment

Build a chatbot using the Microsoft Conversational AI platform. This book will teach you, step by step, how to save time and money by including chatbots in your enterprise's strategy. You will learn how to be proficient at every phase of development, from collaboration on a chatbot in an end-to-end scenario, to the first mock-up phase, and on through to the deployment and evaluation phases.

Microsoft built a cloud service ecosystem for running artificial intelligence workloads in public cloud scenarios and a robust AI platform that offers a broad range of services targeting conversational artificial intelligence solutions such as chatbots.

Building a chatbot requires not just developer coding skills but special considerations, including input from business stakeholders such as domain matter experts and power users. You will learn by example how to use a great set of tools and services to bridge the gap between business and engineering.

You will learn how to successfully morph business requirements into actionable IT and engineering requirements. You will learn about Bot Framework Composer, which allows power users to initiate the building of a chatbot that can then be handed over to the development team to add capabilities through code. Coverage is given to the process of sharing implementation tasks and workloads between power users, who are using a low-code or no-code approach, and developers, who are building out the enhanced features for the chatbot.

What You Will Learn

• Understand Microsoft’s comprehensive AI ecosystem and its services and solutions
• Recognize which solutions and services should be applied in each business scenario
• Discover no-code/low-code approaches for building chatbots
• Develop chatbots using the conversational AI stack
• Align business and development for improved chatbot outcomes and reduced time-to-market

Who This Book Is For

Developers and power users who want to build chatbots. An understanding of the core principles of writing code (.NET or JavaScript) for modern web applications is expected.

About the Author

Stephan Bisser is a technical lead at Solvion and a Microsoft MVP for artificial intelligence based in Austria. In his current role, he focuses on conversational AI, Microsoft 365, and Azure. He is passionate about the conversational AI platform and the entire Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Cognitive Services ecosystem. Stephan and several other MVPs founded the Bot Builder Community, which is a community initiative helping Bot Framework developers with code samples and extensions. Together with Thomy Gölles, Rick Van Rousselt, and Albert-Jan Schot, Stephan is hosting SelectedTech, where they publish webinars and videos on social media around SharePoint, Office365 and the Microsoft AI ecosystem. In addition, he blogs regularly and is a contributing author to Microsoft AI MVP Book.